Fugue #97

"Paulie, where are you going?"

Going over here. Here. Fuzzy. Moving thing.

"What are you doing?"

Touch it.

"Is it ok if he touches it? Mom, is that ok?"

Gene is watchful. This little boy changed everything. We were three - two parents, one child. He was our whole world, and vice versa. He had our undivided attention, you can see it in his face in pictures. And you can see something else there now. Now we are four. It’s a confusion that masks a sadness that he doesn’t understand. He doesn’t know what he’s missing, only that he’s missing something.

And he doesn’t even see the implicit message that his future lies with this baby, not with us. The boys will outlive us, and then they’ll have each other.

Yeah, that’s ok, Gene. Just don’t let him eat it.

"Alright, mom." A slow voice, condescending, that apes his parents, "Now, Paulie, don’t eat that. Mama said so, and I said so."

Fugue #96

How can you believe what the narrator is saying - that when he says something happened, it actually did? This is fiction, after all. None of it really happened.

- Paulie, stop squirming. Gene, stop poking your brother. Ok, boys, c’mon, I can’t tell you a story until you stop. Let’s settle down... Where were we?
- The boys returned to the woods.
- Oh, yeah (winks)...the boys returned to the woods.

Paulie, two of the few words he knows, "Ot woot!"

- The ODD WOODS. Yes, Paulie. And they knew it was the Odd Woods by the sign, which read O-D-D, W-O-O-D-S. The boys looked at each other, made serious faces, and walked inside....where they met the Gatekeepers. (Dramatic pause.) But the boys weren’t worried, they had been here before. One gatekeeper had head that was a...
- TOWEL (owl)!
- And one gatekeeper had a head that was a...
- DOOR (orr)!
- And they both had feet made of...
- BUBBLE GUM (ubbl yum)!!!
- The gatekeepers smiled at the boys, shouted "Yeep!" then ran away.

Don’t feel bad if you lose your place. Just go back and reread what you need to.

Fugue #95

Asking "what is the meaning of life" is asking the wrong question. Life means what, living? And what does living mean? It’s just what we do - the choices we make every step of every day. Do they have any meaning? Do we take them to make broad statements about who we are and what we value? Or do we take them to get from here to there?

Maybe you’re supposed to just be. And enjoy life - as long as you were a nice person, a good person. A person whose existence held us all together (a human together) and pulled us all farther (a human farther), imperceptibly erasing the lines that separate us. And it doesn’t matter if you do or leave anything.

But maybe there’s more. Maybe you’re supposed to leave something, some legacy. I believe that. To me, that’s what life means, more than anything else. The meaning of life - what makes us up, what keeps us going, what pushes us higher, what fills our dreams - is an impulse to leave something behind.

Why you live is what you do that lasts.

Fugue #94

Deena dances to remember a family she never met. Ancient movements, tribal: Swirling, wrapping around herself - her legs kick and turn, her arms entwine and twist, her hands cock at the wrists, palms out palms up fingers straight. Every fiber moving stopping folding refolding into itself, then unfolding going off to start again.

She grew up in Central Illinois, and her extended family was flung across the upper Midwest - Illinois, of course, and Indiana, as well as Minnesota, Wisconsin, even Michigan. She didn’t see them much - once each summer, when they vacationed at a cabin in the North woods. Lazy days of sunning on docks, listening to the radio, painting her nails (fingers, toes), while watching boys be boys. Night in front of bonfires or off in the trees. Harmless flirtations with her boy cousins, not so harmless flirtations with their friends. And the question at the end of every adolescent summer ("Do you love me?") answered by silence - no calls, no letters - from over the horizon.

And so that solemn ever-present line always depressed her, When she went away for college, she went as far as she could - geographically, culturally, occidentally - to New York City, and stayed there.

Marbell watches from the window in the studio door. He knows she’s the one. The most genuine person he’s ever met. Driven but not ambitious, direct but not mean. Kind actually, ever so kind. He watches, but doesn’t knock. She’s working hard, and he’s spellbound.

Fugue #93

"We, of course, do what we can to subsidize the U.S. Postal Service." Ana smiles at Paul, and starts writing. A quick postcard to Marbell, nothing picturesque - a tractor pulling a gigantic ear of corn:

Hi!

We’re getting there. Stopping thru the Quad Cities. It’s warmer now than when you were here. The leaves haven’t started changing, and the hills you mentioned are still hours away, apparently.

Everything is fine. P is good company (he says hi, too, btw), and we banter all day. But he’s still a complete mystery. He’s so sweet to me, but he doesn’t talk about himself. Maybe he will soon.

More later. Miss you guys!

Love,
Ana

(The corn actually IS this big here - who knew?)

She finds a stamp in the change pouch of her wallet and drops the card in the truckstop mailbox. Paul walks up to her carrying a bottle of diet 7-Up and a now-open package of Bit-o-Honeys. He’s chewing, she shakes her head.

- What? What now?
- Nothing, you’re funny. Such a little boy sometimes. Gotta pee, then I’m ready. You can drive.

She flips him the keys and almost winks.

Fugue #92

This is how Zed writes:

He sketches out scenes, simultaneously, longhand on legal pads. Some dealing with certain characters and/or events, some dealing with others. As his mood changes during the day, he switches to other scenes - back and forth and back and forth, etc. Sometimes as many as a dozen a day, over the course of several months, until they are finished. As he progresses, he eventually types these scenes into his computer. And after a period of tinkering and editing, he prints them out, jots a subject word or phrase on a blank page, and staples it to the scene, which he then lays on the floor near other bundles with similar subjects.

His impulses are fleeting, and his interests shift day to day. Sometimes a scene absorbs his mood - the somber becoming somberer - and sometimes it reflects it - the bright would stay just as bright.

Ever-changing moods. And the result is a narrative of daunting density. Each moment filled with emotions and impressions from so many different days. Fragments embedded within fragments, and spat back incomplete - every word the start of another whole sentence, another whole story.

Fugue #91

Paul makes a confession:

"I listen to records I don't like alot more than records I like."

Ana stares over the steering wheel, then looks at herself in the rearview mirror, and grabs her ponytail in her right hand to straighten it. Absently...

- Why?
- I dunno. I feel bad for them. Like I wasn’t a big enough person to hear their merits the first few times I listened.

She smiles as he rambles. And eventually (it takes a few miles), she shakes herself back out of her own head and into a conversation. They go from music to music criticism, to criticism generally: The merits of a work of art are determined by professional reviewers, discuss. Critical mass and backlash and the secrets of "deep reading"...of symbolism.

When is a fog a fog? And when is it something else, something more? Paul says he doesn’t understand symbolism in literature, and Ana says that’s because he never took lit classes in college: "You have to learn to spot the recurring motifs in practice."

Oh really? Outside, haystacks begin appearing in the fields.

Fugue #90

Paul lays back, too, staring at the clouds, trying to think of quotes from poems - ones that Gene had showed him - to reel his brother back.

And Memory [capital M, Pushkin used a capital M] before my wakeful eyesWith noiseless hand unwinds her lengthy scroll.

Minutes pass. Gene sits up and looks at Paul, who shades his eyes with his right hand, smiles, then sits up. They sit, side by side, quiet, until Paul says...

- Hey, look at that. That oak tree, over there. A leaf just fell, like it was dancing down to the ground, back and forth, up down up - like a butterfly, almost. It’s weird that something dead could remind you of something so alive.
- Let’s not get poetic, ok?
- Gene, that’s it. I talk the way I talk. I thought of something, and thought I’d share it with you to cheer you up. What’s so wrong with that?
- Nothing. Just like there’s nothing wrong with me saying it’s too much, it’s indecent.
- What’s decent then? Cussing? I’ll shut up, and you can shut up. Or we might really end up fighting.
- Oh please, let’s fight. Really fight, instead of dancing around with all these words like your little leaf.
- Somebody would get hurt, ha.
- So what. Here, out here in the fields? It’s perfect. Nobody would see us, and it wouldn’t really matter when I beat your ass.

Paul turns to Gene to shove him in jest, but Gene’s face is different. More earnest, more pained, more threatening.

Fugue #89

- I hate so many people. And you, Sweet Paulie. You’re so nice. How could you hate anyone? (Pause) You don’t rely enough on yourself.
- Oh, like you do? You couldn’t even break up with Em. You just treated her like shit until she broke up with you. Pretty high opinion of yourself, man.
- When I meet somebody who can hold their own next to me, I’ll change that opinion.
- Enough already. You’re so negative today, it’s ridiculous.
- Negative, that’s right. I like it. It helps me organize my thoughts, it feels right. Just like it feels right for you to like mom’s applesauce. It’s all sensations - there aren’t any rules or principles, just sensations. You haven’t figured that out yet?
- You’re being serious?
- Sure.
- Man, you’re all over the place. I can’t tell if you mean half of what you’re saying.
- C’mon. I thought you and I had decided that a negative view of the world was ok.
- It’s just too easy.
- Of course, it is. And once you’ve decided that, go ahead. Don’t stop, mow everything down.

Gene nods at the fields below them. He lays back and closes his eyes, arms folded finally behind his head.

Fugue #88

They talked a lot about the meanings of things, but ultimately decided everything was meaningless. Everything changed, and even the most unshakable truths - understandings, assumptions, their bedrock - defied their best efforts to pin on fixed definitions.

What does it mean?
What does love mean?
What does the future, the past, the present mean?
You and me and us?
And together? What does together even mean?

Many different things.

Are we together here, sitting on the bleachers watching the marching band practice on a mid-August afternoon?

Yes.

Are we together, with each other and committed to stay that way?

No.

Then what? What’s left?

- I have nothing. I have nothing left to give to you. I gave you my all, my everything, Gene. I really did.
- So did I.
- Really?